Thoughts on Parenting (Part 1)

2023-02-25

I'm two-and-a-half years into being a parent. I have some thoughts I'd like to share.

Persuasion

Getting a toddler to do what you want while simultaneously preventing a tantrum is a thin line to walk. The preferred method is persuasion (as opposed to just physically making them do something). But persuasion is hard. It's certainly more work than, say, just picking them up and forcing them to wash their hands. You really have to think about what they want and what would motivate them to do a certain action. You have to put yourself in their shoes. In a word, you need to have empathy.

Interestingly, the fact I've needed to strengthen my empathy muscle has spilled over into other parts of my life. An unexpected benefit: I feel like I've become more persuasive at work.

Regulating the body

When you have a small child, you're basically in charge of regulating their body for them. You're now responsible for some of their most basic functions: eating, sleeping, and waste removal. At two-and-half, my daughter is starting to take over some of these for herself. We've got her mostly potty trained, but she still has accidents every now and then. She can feed herself, but still has a hard time detecting when she's hungry (i.e. she get's hangry). She's mostly sleep trained but she still has a hard time recognizing/feeling how tired she is (i.e. does not like bedtime!).

When you're a parent, so many of the things that have been on autopilot come back to the forefront. I've realized that I actually still struggle with some of these things myself. For example, before having my daughter I definitely had worse sleep hygiene (i.e. "winding down before bed"). But because I've been thinking about it and teaching it, my own sleep hygiene has improved. One might say a side-benefit of parenting is you become more mindful.

Food quality

This is kind of related to regulating the body. You want your kid to eat healthy, so you make sure to buy them healthy food. And then you look at what you put on their plate and what's on yours and you think "man, she eats better than I do". In other words, in being concious of what you feed your kid, you become more concious of the food you feed yourself. More mindfulness it seems.

Boundaries

You know how bowling alleys can put up bumpers to block the gutters? I feel like being a parent is similar to being bumpers at a bowling alley and your kid is the bowling ball. Some days are amazing. They head straight down the middle of the lane and hit a strike. You're so proud of them. Other days, they ricochet off you once or twice, but eventually make it down the lane and hit some of the pins.

And other days they're just making wide arcs, back and forth across the lane, slamming you at every opportunity.

Kids desperately need boundaries. They have no idea how the world works. It's only through consistent application/enforcement of rules that they can begin to make sense of anything. But being the boundaries for another human is tough, especially doing it consistently. Often they'll be pushing back (hard!) against you, when you're just trying to help them.

This has caused me to reflect on my own behavior. How many times have I forced someone else to be the boundaries for me. Certainly I did this with my own parents. But what about when my spouse has to push back on me? Or what about when my manager has to reel me in at work because I'm saying something inflammatory?

What changes should I make in my own behavior so that I'm not pushing against the people in my life who are just trying to help me?

Thinking about how others feel. More empathy.

Interlude: Why do parents have so much stuff?

A few months ago I was talking to a non-parent-friend about how I might need to purchase a new car.

Friend: Why do you need [more] trunk space?
Me: Child. When ever you have a child, you just have more stuff.

But this begs the question as to why you have more stuff. My conclusion: the reason kids have so much stuff is that the world is designed for full grown adults. As a parent, you're basically lugging around a bunch of adapters for your small human. I told this to another parent-friend of mine. Their response: "That’s profound and also obviously true." 🤷

Media hits harder

During my wife's pregnancy I was reading Hyperion. It's an amazing anthology of sorts, and one of the stories involves a man who has a terminally ill daughter. Despite the fact my daughter wasn't even born yet, the story tore me to pieces. I started thinking about what it would be like to stare down a terminal illness in my own daughter.

I was a lot more stoic before my daughter was born. I'm sure in some respects that was advantageous. But now, I actually like how good media hits me harder. I recently watched "Everything, Everywhere, All at Once" and I couldn't help but start thinking deeply about my own relationships with my family. And don't even get me started on Pixar movies. It's basically guaranteed now that I'll start crying whenever I watch one of those.

Again, I'm going to assert that becoming a parent has made me more empathetic. Partly because I need to be in tune with this other, small, inexperienced human in order to anticipate their needs. But also partly because I can relate to a whole new class of experiences to which I previously couldn't.

Parenting Choices

The best bit of parenting advice I ever got was from a co-worker of mine. He said (paraphrasing):

Everyone, especially other parents, will tell you how to do this or do that with regards to some aspect of parenting. The reality is, if you're trying to teach your kid or change their behavior, just think about what would work for you. Your kid is, in many ways, just a smaller version of yourself.

There are a few parenting books I would say are, in a sense, sources of truth¹. Most of the advice they give is fairly universal. But a theme that all of them share is "for any given issue there are options, you should do what works best for you and your family".

I'll take this one step further and say that this extends all the way to the decision of whether or not to have a child in the first place. This decision should be no different than any other parenting-related decision: do whatever you think will work best for you². You know yourself best, and if kids aren't for you then that's totally ok.

By the way, if you're on the fence about whether or not to have kids, I highly recommend this short essay from Paul Graham. It greatly helped me in my own decision making process.

Empathy

These thoughts have all been flying around my head for some time now. But it's interesting to see them all written down in one place. It's only now I see the clear theme of empathy. I won't go so far as to generalize that "being a parent makes you more empathetic". But I think it does for many. And it certainly has for me.

Footnotes